Category Archives: News & Reviews

I was never very fond of anthropomorphic animals. That’s one of the reasons why I never actually played Gamma World. I just found it too childish. When my Mutant: Year Zero GM approached us with the wish to play some Gen Lab Alpha, I was skeptical at first, but – oh, boy – I am having the time of life with my grumpy, old healer cat character called Tiberius and his motley crew of Mutant Animal resistance fighters …

Mutant: Genlab Alpha is an expansion of Mutant: Year Zero but also a standalone game. In MY:0 you play mutant humans with extraordinary abilities trying to survive in the dangerous and irradiated Zone, while in M:GA you take on the roles of mutated animals. You are the result of genetic experiments which gave animals some human traits like being able to speak, use tools and walk upright.

M:GA is a 244-paged hardcover book with a beautiful matte finish and high production values. As with Mutant: Year Zero and the other books by Free League Publishing, it’s a joy just to leaf through the book and admire the artwork and excellent layout. There’s also a PDF version of the rules which is fully bookmarked. This review is based on both the hardcover and PDF versions of the book which have graciously been provided by Free League’s Boel Bermann. Thanks again!

If you are into science fiction and space opera roleplaying games the latest Bundle of Holding may be of interest to you. For about $15 you get everything you need to run a campaign in the collapsed Third Imperium.

The Starter Collection includes the core rulebook, Survival Margin, the World Tamer’s Handbook, Vampire Fleets and the TNE Player’s Forms. If you pay more than the threshold of $26 you also get the Bonus Collection which contains Keepers of the Flame and the Regency Combat Vehicle Guide, Path of Tears, Smash & Grab, the Reformation Coalition Equipment Guide, the Star Vikings character collection, Aliens of the Rim, and last but not least the TNE Referee’s screen.

10% of your payment will be donated to Human Rights Watch. So you’re not only getting a great game, but you’re also donating to a good cause.

TNE is not uncontroversial though. In this edition of the game they ditched the original rules system and replaced it with a version of GDW’s inhouse system. A lot of fans also weren’t that happy with the post-apocalyptic nature of the setting.

But in my opinion TNE is one of the best editions of Traveller. The rules system works pretty well, and the setting solves one of Traveller’s biggest problems: the overwhelming scope and history of the Third Imperium setting. With the New Era GDW basically scraped the slate clean. The focus is on smaller polities trying to survive the aftermath of the rebellion and the threat of the Virus. But if you wished you could always run a more traditional game set into another era after all.

If you are familiar with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency you will know the phrase “Everything is connected”. It generally highlights that everything in the universe is connected to everything else in the universe. Park that thought for a minute, I will come back to it later…

Pocket Gumshoe

Pocket Gumshoe was released in January this year by Nothing Ventured Games. I have never read, or played, a Gumshoe game but I was aware of the basic mechanic of not rolling to find the clue, that is given, but you roll to see how much additional information you glean.

Thinking you know how something works and reading the actual rules are not the same so I was interested in reading the rules for myself.

Considering that Pocket Gumshoe is a ‘light’ version of the game and the rules are just 32 pages my impression is that from a writing point of view this is the best game I have ever read! I am not saying that I will drop everything and convince my group to play pocket gumshoe. The game itself is not really to my taste. It is when you look at the component parts rather than the whole that the brilliance of the contents are revealed.

So enough teasing, the part that I loved the most was the support for new GMs. All the way through the rules are rich in great advice, not just for Gumshoe, for running a game and managing a group of players. It focuses on the improvisational nature of role playing and how to encourage the improv. to advance the story.

There is a wonderful example, this time for players, above. I am pretty sure all us when GMing have had the players stall due to excessive speculating or failing to agree on a plan of action due to a lack of information.

Pocket Gumshoe uses about a dozen general skills for meeting challenges. It doesn’t have a climbing skill, a running skill, an acrobatics skill, rather it has a single Athletics skill to cover all eventualities including dodging in combat. All the skills are broadly defined. This means that just a dozen skills cover all the situations that you will meet in this genre of gaming.

There is one standout skill in this collection and that is ‘Preparedness’. The idea behind this skill is that if a character needs a particular piece of equipment then you roll your skill and on a success you do indeed have that item.

I love this skill. There is always going to be a disconnect between what a character would know and what a player would know. The preparedness skill allows the character to have that sort of dynamic knowledge. It almost emulates the knowledge that the player doesn’t know they don’t know.

So as an aside there is a skill in the new Rolemaster rules called Vocation, bear with me. The idea of Vocation is that you take a specialisation in Vocation to match your characters job or background (not necessarily their profession/class). So when you want to complete a task that is not covered by one of the primary skills but your character would know how to do such as a Ranger being able to set a snare or light a fire in a rain forest or predict the weather from cloud formations then you roll your Vocaton:Ranger. One skill covers a myriad of situations. This Vocation skill is not popular with some in the playtest (those that loved the skill bloat of previous versions, I suspect). I can see house ruling the Vocation skill to incorporate Gumshoe’s Preparedness skill with the only caveat being that the only items that can be produced need to be related to the characters vocational background. I would happily eliminate about 90% of characters inventory management with this skill.

If you can remember back a bit I was exploring a game concept called Devil’s Staircase a while ago. That game is still in development. I am still working on the first proper draft of the rules but I am going to adopt a version of the preparedness skill and the relaxed attitude to inventory management with that game.

This is what I meant at the top about how ‘everything is connected’. This one skill definition in a minimalist game has had a direct impact on both a card based wild west game and on Rolemaster, one of the traditionally heavy weight games*. Is this plagiarism? I don’t think so. I think we should be taking the best of what we can find in any game and apply it anywhere where it makes sense and improves the experience and fun for all the players and GM.

So to sum up, if you want to take a look at Gumshoe then I seriously recommend reading this rulebook. It will not take long, it is just 32 pages, and it is free. As an introduction to the Gumshoe system I think it is damn near perfect!

*Despite its reputation for being rules heavy, Rolemaster is actually pretty rules light compared to the monsters that are 5e and Pathfinder.

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About the Author

Stargazer

Michael Wolf is a German games designer and enthusiast best known for his English language role-playing games blog, Stargazer's World, and for creating the free rules-light medieval fantasy adventure game Warrior, Rogue & Mage. He has also worked as an English translator on the German-language Dungeonslayers role-playing game and was part of its editorial team.

In addition to his work on Warrior, Rogue & Mage and Dungeonslayers, he has created several self-published games and also performed layout services and published other independent role-playing games such as A Wanderer's Romance, Badass, and the Wyrm System derivative Resolute, Adventurer & Genius, all released through his imprint Stargazer Games.

Professionally, he works as a video technician and information technologies specialist. Stargazer's World was started by Michael in August 2008.

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